Walden wins on a wet and windy day at East Devon

The February seniors’ stableford was held at East Devon on Monday, writes Paul Willoughby.

A fortnight ago, 72 enthusiastic seniors dialled into Howdidido (Non golfers, I’ll explain that one day!) at 7.30am in the hope of getting their chosen starting time by booking on line.

However, on the day only 36 played, and why?

Because the weather was fearsome! For the early players their problem was the wind – certainly gale force – and hurricane force if you asked any of them!

It could, be said to have been ‘Blowing a Hooley’.

Now where did that originate?

Derivations come from Iceland and Orkney (both boring) but the best comes from Ireland – ‘a wild spirited party’. We have at least one Irish member of the club so I wonder if he/they had anything to do with it?

The later players had rain as well so the conditions were as bad as they could be, but surprisingly the winner came home from the wet and windy group – Geoff Walden (8) who scored 35 points.

That was good play. He was closely followed by Alan Farwell (10) with 34 points and Bill Cole (13) with 33 points.

Despite the weather there were three twos from Charlie Stafford, Terry Harris and Mike Brailey. As I don’t know the amount of the pot, they’ll have to make do with a large round of applause!

East Devon Golf Club always welcomes new members, but they mustn’t think playing today was an initiation test. It wasn’t; that was just blokes being blokes!

Axe Valley Runners Grizzly multi-terrain race is the seminal post-modern cross country race, often imitated, but never bettered and still incredibly popular after nearly 30 years, writes Dave Eveleigh.

With Friday, forecast to be the best gliding day of the week, Devon and Somerset Gliding Club members used social media to get together on a non-club day - the second so far this year, writes Jill Harmer.

King’s College, Taunton, has just launched a multi-sport BTEC qualification that will potentially involve a number of the major professional sporting clubs across the south-west of England, providing opportunities in a variety of sports.